Players go down with honour – O’Donnell

By Shane Brophy

This Nenagh CBS team and school were united to the very end. It took the players and mentors a long time to emerge from the dressing rooms as the management tried to help the players process what had just happened.

Their teachers and supporters waited to give them much needed support which they deserved after their All-Ireland dreams were quashed in a devastating manner by St Kieran’s College’s late smash and grab raid.

Even for a man as experienced in management as Donach O’Donnell, Saturday was a new experience.

“It was one of the worst dressing rooms I have seen,” he revealed.

“There were lot of tears in there, a lot of fellas disappointed. They are such a good bunch of lads. They are really a pleasure to deal with.

“I was so proud of them on and off the field, around school anytime we went anywhere there were compliments about their behaviour, and acted, and the way they held themselves.

“They are just devastated.”

He added: “It’s one you feel you left behind.

“We were ahead for sixty minutes but didn’t score for the last seven or eight minutes and they scored 1-3 in injury time. It’s one we’ll have a lot of regrets about.”

Nenagh did so much right and were the better team for long spells but St Kieran’s timed their run to perfection as their extra size and strength took its toll as the game went on.

“Our fellas physically were struggling with them,” O’Donnell said of why the game went against them.

“They were coming out of tackles and rucks particularly, which is nearly a trademark for us. That added up going into the last ten or fifteen minutes as our fellas had really pushed hard and were on their last legs at that stage.

“Even going into injury time, I thought we were going to be comfortable. Again, that physicality, they won three or four balls in the air and walked up through us, physically it is very hard to deal with.”

A number of breaks went against Nenagh in the closing stages also, including high challenge on goalkeeper Paddy McCormack which didn’t result in a free and led to Kieran’s scoring their sixteenth point to reduce the deficit to two, when Nenagh should have had the chance to clear their lines at least.

O’Donnell said: “I don’t understand that when you have four umpires, two linesmen, and a referee, and none of them saw anything. I thought it was plain as day. A strike with the hurley to the face is a red card and at that stage of the game it should have been but again I don’t understand how all of those people didn’t see anything apparently. It’s a bit frustrating.”

It was a tough way for Nenagh’s great year to end on but O’Donnell tried to end on a positive note: “All I could say to them is to look back on the good times as to win a Harty is no mean feat.”

For St Kieran’s College manager Brian Dowling, it was utter relief at the final whistle.

“I’m just so happy to get out of here alive,” he said.

“We would have taken extra time with ten minutes to go. Nenagh are an unbelievable team, they probably did the best hurling for a lot of it.

“I don’t know what happened today, we made a lot of mistakes but one thing I can say about these lads is they have character.

The way they stood up in the end, Barcoe’s point was unbelievable, Dan Carroll came on and got the winning goal, it’s just pure relief.”